Noble Order
by Zarius
Summary: Tempted by a call to arms, Wilfred thinks back to times of struggle and conflict, the catalyst for the best of times (slight reworking of The End of Time Part Two)


**DOCTOR WHO**

**NOBLE ORDER**

**WRITTEN BY ZARIUS**

* * *

In the cold black void alight with stars, aboard the Vinvocci ship, a former soldier took several nimble steps along the darkened corridors in search of a response.

"Doctor? Hello? Hello?" he cried, hoping his friend would yell back.

This was reminding him of a time he'd spent in Palestine in 1948, in the city of Haifa. A thin lad then he was.

He'd been stationed on a rooftop there with another friend, and he could never forget the fateful hours spent watching a brutal skirmish unfold with him. Bullets were flying everywhere.

"We ought to risk it you know" said his friend, repulsed by the ongoing carnage.

"_Order _Leonard, we can't abandon the post"

"You make it sound like there's actually structure to this, for god's sake Mott, look down there, it's maddening. There's women down there, _children_. I can't stomach it; I'm going down there to help, to hell with order and structure"

"Leonard, don't be stupid"

Mott's warnings went unheard.

Leonard Hobson, brave and foolish, abandoned his post to join in the fighting; much of it had cooled off.

He called for his friend in the cold and the dark, tripping up on some of the leftover bodies, and on many of the attempts he would capture the attention of a couple of raiders who would make their way over to the streets he was positioned on, forcing him to head into alleyways and cut through corners.

The frustration of fear built up, his concern turned to anger, he knew he would soon run out of breath, and with that, options.

Finally, he would glimpse his friend not too far away, trying to make it past the raiders in the middle of a murky, misty town centre.

Wilf intended to signal to him, a little light lingering from the lamp, something, _anything_ other than his voice as a summons, which would undoubtedly draw the attention of the patrolman.

He held the lamp up, he turned the light on and off in rapid succession, hoping the corner of his friend's eye would pick it up.

Fortune smiled on them both, as he did, but fortune seemed intent on playing quite cruelly with them.

Leonard was drawn towards the light, only to trip on a loose lace of his bootstraps, crashing to the pavement, and alerting one raider.

He turned around, commanded their surrender in his native language, and charged towards Wilf's friend.

Wilf took out his revolver; he called for his friend to duck as he picked himself up so he could afford a vital shot. When the opportunity arose however, he hesitated.

In times of war, laws fall silent, but _his_ law, his code of conduct, compelled him to fire nothing but warning shots blindly in the air, taking a life was not of his calibre.

His friend turned to his opponent, drawing his own weapon, but was too slow to fire first.

The shots ripped through him, shoulder and leg, and he dropped to the floor.

The friend begged Wilf to flee before he too was next to feel the blight of a shell.

Wilf gained a greater surge of courage, rage fuelling a monstrous intent to right the wrong of prior neglect, and took careful aim at the individual from his position; he fired two shells that grazed him in the side and foot, leaving the street littered with two weakened soldiers.

Wilf ran over to his friend, helped him up, and carried him as far as he could. He wound up dropping the lamp, which forced him to navigate his way through the dark, only the stars could guide his path.

The two men made their way over to a nearby tavern, a tavern that Wilf was sure had not been there before. He would knock on the door frantically, demanding to be let in so his friend could be tended to.

As soon as the door opened, a hand grabbed him, a stern hand, a strong one, a voice with a touch of class, the fragrance potent.

"Oh, I think we're lost" he said.

"And yet you are found" the woman replied.

* * *

Back in the present, aboard the Vinvoicci ship adrift amongst a permanently blackened sky, Wilf was face to face with an elder woman attired in all white clothing, saying precisely what a younger girl had said to him all those years ago in Palestine. A day of great pain, but also the catalyst for days he would count amongst the best of his life.

"What did you say?" Wilf asked as familiar feelings intruded on his tired old mind.

"Events are closing. The day is almost upon us. But tell me, old soldier. Did you take arms?"

"I brought this" Wilf said, holding the revolver in his hand.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"This is the Doctor's final battle. At the end of his life, he must stand at arms, or lose himself and this entire world, to the End of Time"

"But he never carries guns. Who are you?"

"I was lost, so very long ago" she said.

And before Wilfred could say anything more to her, she had vanished within the readiness of a blink.

* * *

Wilf thought back to that day in Palestine, Leonard was being tended to in the tavern by a kind girl with a kind face, a radiance of beauty. She would occasionally glance at him as he watched her bathe Leonardo's wound. Wilf anxiously waved at her, and she would smile in response.

She talked a little bit of Palestinian to her maidens, all draped in red silk. She asked one of them to fetch a chalice filled with a hefty brew.

Leonard grabbed the lapels of Wilf's army coat, and whispered to him.

"Light's going out Mott" he said.

"No, no don't you dare, I shan't allow it, here you take this" Wilf said, passing the revolver into Leonard's hand.

"If Death comes to your door, you knock it down and take him first" said Wilf.

"Spare yourself before me man" said Leonard, handing it back to him.

"Talk some sense into him" said Wilf.

The woman was handed the chalice, he poured its contents into Leonard's lips.

As Leonard's condition stabilised, the young girl beckoned Wilf to join her at a table, her servants gave them both cold beverages.

"Are you sure you want to keep the lights on in here?" said Wilf.

"Nobody will interrupt us" the woman replied.

"How are you sure, two men were shot out there"

"I saw what you did, you hesitated" she said.

"I-I know, I shouldn't have, I'm sorry, it wasn't within me, and because of that Leonard is in the sorry state he's in. I only fired back when I knew I stood a chance"

"A chance, however slim, to still save him" the woman spoke

"Not a chance I'm proud to have taken, it should have been a direct shot, there was time for that"

"There will come a time where even that must end"

"Time?"

"Time, like fear, is a companion; it helps us along the way, guides us towards a destination, a destiny not riddled by the same mistakes. We must appreciate the mercies they afford"

"I can't appreciate mercy if a man pays the price for the lack of any on the opposite side"

"The opposite of what you demonstrated will always struggle with its understanding, of what time and fear mean to them, you have learned to understand both tonight, and you need never doubt them again, this will come to define your defiance in the future, it will lead you to lead the people who need you"

"A leader? Oh heavens no, I'm a private, I follow orders, I don't give them"

"You need only give order, not demand it"

"Give order? You mean order as in structure, not command?"

"There will be time to understand which is which" the woman replied, raising a glass to toast him.

Wilf felt in his heart he had found a kindred spirit.

"You sound like you want to put up with us for the night?"

"Night leads into day" she said

"Amen to that" said Wilf, and took this as a cue to raise his glass to hers.

* * *

Back in the present, Wilf finally caught sight of his current friend, The Doctor.

"Aye, aye. Got this old tub mended?"

"Just trying to fix the heating" The Doctor replied.

Wilf chuckled, despite the chaos going on down there on Earth; The Doctor was always full of energy and unparalleled merriment, trying to bring levity to an all too grim situation.

Wilf walked over to the observation window to admire the sights outside, the planet Earth, which they were orbiting, the stars and moon.

"I've always dreamt of a view like that. Hee, hee. I'm an astronaut. It's dawn over England, look. Brand new day" he said.

His thoughts again turned to Palestine, to the woman he met there and the one aboard the ship, he wondered why he was struggling with making the connection, if there was any, between them; both looked nothing like the other, in age or appearance.

Then he remembered what The Doctor had said about changing his appearance, about how a new man was waiting in the wings, ready to step forth and carry on where this wondrous man who had meant the world to him and Donna would leave off.

His thoughts turned back to the woman, then to the girl, then to the days and nights spent with the girl in hiding from Germans in Paris and tending to Leonard, the drinking, the dares, and the dancing, his mind raced through them all, trying to fixate on what came first, what the greatest gamble was.

Wilf insisted this mental challenge seize, he turned his focus on the others who mattered to him in his life, both in the present and his most cherished past.

"My wife's buried down there. I might never visit her again now. Do you think he changed them, in their graves?"

"I'm sorry" The Doctor replied.

Wilf was aghast...his wife, his cherished one, the face of a psychopath, a grinning soulless shell who spat in the face of the God he praised, etched on her decaying features.

Wilf chose not to dignify the horror in front of The Doctor; he wanted him to admire his tenacity.

"No, not your fault"

"Isn't it?"

"Oh, 1948, I was over there. End of the Mandate in Palestine. Private Mott. Skinny little idiot, I was. Stood on this rooftop, in the middle of a skirmish. It was like a blizzard, all them bullets in the air. The world gone mad. Yeah, you don't want to listen to an old man's tales, do you?"

"I'm older than you" The Doctor replied.

"Get away" Wilf responded, scarcely believing a word of it.

"I'm nine hundred and six"

"What, really, though?"

"Yeah"

"When were you born?"

"A long time ago, there was a war going on there too...there's always a war, eventually I learned to grit my teeth and bear it, and vow everywhere I went that no war would dare follow my departure"

Wilfred was thinking again of that time in Palestine, a time of war, yet a time where care and kindness gave him a sense of true duty, a duty of care that he must now quickly administer, so that no war would follow. A quick and sudden solution.

He handed The Doctor his revolver.

Listen, I, I want you to have this. I've kept it all this time, and I thought..." he said

"No"

"No, but if you take it, you could..."

"You had that gun in the mansion. You could have shot the Master there and then"

"Too scared, I suppose" Wilf replied.

* * *

His mind, his accursed mind, drew him back to Palestine, to the night before he departed the tavern.

Weeks had passed, Leonard had l healed, a spring in his step, but his mind, for some reason, appeared to be blanking on a few things.

Perhaps it had been a lingering concussion; perhaps it was the toll of his condition, a fever he was still somewhat struggling with, but he could not get any bearing on his location, or the past few days. Days Wilf had spent in good health and in greater company.

"I'll come back, we'll get you out of here" he said as he lay in bed beside the girl, those priceless few nights having tethered one another to their hearts and minds, curled up next to him, a look of longing in her eyes.

Longing and love.

"I shall be lost without you" she said.

"Now now sweetheart, you don't have to lose sight or sense of me, I'll only be gone a few hours, just need to drop Leonard off at the regiment"

"There are greater battles to come; you must be ready for them, you have come to understand time and fear, now your understanding must transcend time and reason"

"When I get home, I'm going to try and avoid the hot zones. Somewhere where there's order, structure, like I've always sought, that's what you seek too, when I come back for you, we can bring the family Mott to some noble order"

The temptation of a noble order was all that sustained the two souls for this one final night spent in each other's company, a temptation that led to a most natural consummation.

When he got back to his regiment and informed them of the tavern and the courageous souls in there who had aided him and Leonard amidst unfolding chaos, but when they arrived, they found not a trace of the tavern or its occupants. Citizens that surrounded it had heard rumblings of a whole structure vanishing in the night, occupied by a wheezing, groaning sound.

Wilfred found the findings of the retrieval mission absurd, but no matter how many inquiries he put together, he could not find one trace of the girl he had given his heart too

Time passed for him, and in time his heart had mended, it found peace, love and solace in another, one he cherished, and the mind dared not reflect back on that first love so as not to taint the purity of what he had with his family beyond then.

But in the present, now, with his world collapsing around him, Wilf would now find solace again.

* * *

He looked into The Doctor's young eyes and, finally, saw the age in them, he also recognised something else, something distinct, something that defied all sense of time and reason, yet when he delved even further, he at last understood both.

"I'd be proud."

"Of what?"

"If you were my dad"

For the next set of exchanges, Wilf was on autopilot, the realisation of what the elder woman had said to him, why she kept interacting with him specifically, the cryptic words that echoed back along his timeline to those fateful nights and days in Palestine, and the resignation in The Doctor's voice as he talked to him, resigned to a fate as inevitable as the passing of all things.

_Not today_, Wilf thought, and when the exchange of words reached its apex, he placed the revolver square in The Doctor's face.

"Now you take this. That's an order, Doctor. Take the gun. You take the gun and save your life. And please don't die. _You're the most wonderful man and I don't want you to die"_

In the depths of space, there was but one father remaining that belonged to Earth. And he couldn't be more proud.

Or more nobler.


End file.
